There Are Little Kingdoms. Kevin Barry
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fire. He looked beyond himself, and it had the look of South Tipp out there, lush and damp-seeming, with good-sized hills rising to the east, which would be the Comeraghs. He knew more about the hills than he knew about himself, but lush, yes, as if it was May, a savage growth that made each small copse of trees livid with bunched ferocity. The face seen dully in the window was a sad face, certainly, with a downcast mouth and emotional eyes, but it was strangely calm too. He took a glance south and found he was wearing an anorak long past its day, a pair of jeans with diesel stains caked into them and shoes straight off an evidence table. There was a bag, he noticed, in the rack overhead and he reached to take it down, breathing heavily. It was a Reebok holdall, scuffed and torn, and by no means a classy piece of luggage. He sat on the Expressway as it motored north through Tipperary this afternoon in the apparent summer with the bag in his lap. What kind of condition are you in at all, he wondered, when you wake up on a bus in the middle of countryside and you have no idea of who you are, or what your name is even?
The bus was quiet, with just a handful of sad cases thrown here and there, the elderly and the infirm, the free-pass brigade with their jaunty afflictions. He hefted the holdall, tested its weight. Come on now, what could be inside there? The head of John the Baptist? He opened it and with relief found just a sweatshirt and another pair of jeans. There was a box of fags, Bensons, and a yellow plastic lighter in a pocket of the jeans. There was a wallet in the other pocket, it held six hundred euro in cash and a scrap of paper folded over twice. The scrap of paper said ‘Rooney’s Auctioneers, 5pm.’ It was at this point that he got the first of the tremors. This is what he would come to call them: the tremors. A tremor was when a flash of something came to him. The nature of this was visceral, more a feeling than a thought, and this first tremor came in the form of music, a snatch of music, five sad slow notes played on a recorder.
‘Of course,’ said an old fella in the seat opposite, looking across. ‘I have the bus pass myself, I’d be going up and down the country on a regular basis.’
‘Is that right?’ he said, and his own voice was a surprise to him, a husky baritone.
‘Oh yes. I do be bulling for road, you see. And I find that the B&Bs these days are excellent value for money. They serve you a powerful breakfast. And at this stage, most of the rooms have tea and coffee making facilities. And the cable as well. You can be watching Sky News.’
‘I see.’
‘And where’ll you stay above?’
‘The chances are,’ he said, ‘I’ll be in a B&B myself.’
‘Very good!’ said the old fella, as if this was the best decision a man could ever hope to make.
There were certain pieces of information available. He knew, for example, that the course of Irish history was besmirched with treacheries and suppressions. He knew this because in some foggy classroom at the back of his mind he had been made to read it aloud to the rest of the children, despite or maybe even because of his terrible stammer. T-t-t-the course of I-I-Irish history is b-b-b-besmirched… You wouldn’t likely forget the treacheries and suppressions after that.
The old boy looked over again, with rheumy eyes and gummy mouth, and he winked:
‘Listen, there’s every chance now we’ll get in before five. You’ll be able to get down to Rooney’s, get a hold of them keys.’
‘Do you reckon?’ he said, and there was more than a sliver of fear in him.
‘Ah we’ll be in before five easy.’
A childish notion came. He thought that maybe he had died, and was in limbo, and that this old boy was some manner of gatekeeper. He shucked himself free of this sensation as best as he could, looked out the window: gloom floated down from morbid hills. The Expressway passed through a village, really more of a crossroads than a village, just a collision of a few byways and houses, a shop and, finally, a pub. As the bus passed by this establishment, the eyes nearly came out of his head. Was this, he wondered, a clue as to the character of the individual? He swivelled in his seat and looked desperately back down the road as the pub went out of view again. The throat was after going pure dry. He straightened himself and cast a wary glance across the aisle.
‘He’s making good time today,’ said the old fella.
‘He is.’
A bigger town announced itself with garden centres and D-I-Y warehouses and a large sign in the middle of a new roundabout that read:
BULMER’S CIDER WELCOMES YOU TO CLONMEL
‘He’s sucking diesel today,’ said the old fella. ‘Twenty to five!’
‘Faith, he is,’ he said.
Taking the Reebok holdall, he stood as the bus eased into the bleak station and he made a whistling attempt at nonchalance.
‘Listen to me,’ said the old fella, ‘the best of luck to you now with everything. Something tells me you might have done a good deal here. And don’t mind what the crowd below are saying.’
‘Thanks very much,’ he said, and he stepped off the Expressway and into the mysteries of Clonmel.
He wasn’t long getting directions to Rooney’s—Davitt Street, first left—and he wasn’t long noticing that it was beside a small pub name of The Dew Drop Inn. He had a few minutes to spare, and there was a strange draw from this place, a magnet drag. The next thing he knew, he was inside at the counter, in the dank half-light, throwing the holdall down to his feet and putting his elbows up on the bar.
‘What’ll it be?’ said the young one behind the bar.
‘Pint b-bottle of B-Bulmer’s,’ he said, ‘and a b-b-baby Powers.’
It appeared that he knew full well what he was doing in this type of situation. There was a bottle put down in front of him, and a pint glass filled with ice, and the small whiskey appeared as a cheerful companion. He made short work of this order, and he started to feel somewhat philosophical. What, after all, he said to himself, is an identity? Surely it is only a means of marking yourself out in time. And what is time in itself, only an arbitrary and entirely illusory system designed to remind us of death? To separate us from the eternal present enjoyed by the beasts of the fields. So why need you bother with either one, when you have the bones of six hundred euro in your fist, and a fag lit in the corner of your mouth? The five o’clock news came on the radio. It said Orla was missing since March 14th and the one clue for investigators was a red baseball cap.
‘That’ll be me,’ he said to the young one, and she responded with a lazy smile and a stretching movement like a cat would make. There might be sport to be had in this place yet.
He strode in the door of Rooney’s like a man who owned the rights to the whole of love. There was another young lady there, neat behind her desk, with a poignant mouth and agreeable knees.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘I had an appointment for five?’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It must be Mr Tobin, is it?’
‘Correct.’
‘Mr Tobin,’ she explained, ‘Mr Rooney is actually out at present. He is showing a pig operation in the direction of Knockbawn, but listen now, I have the keys and the lease here for you.’
‘Outstanding.’
‘The money has cleared. Everything is ready to go. All you have to do is sign your name. So if you’d like to take a seat, you can have a quick read through and make sure everything is in order.’
‘I will,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the w-weight off my feet.’
He felt that he was doing very well. His manner was charming, and if he didn’t look exactly dapper, than at least he had a benevolent aura. Unfortunately, he noted, there was a smell of drink off him, which was something he would have to watch, but still and all he was presented with the necessary document. The lease shook a little as he read through it. It turned out he was after buying a chipper in Clonmel.
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